Heat is on to cut fuel bills

Equally, the need for careful use of energy, and improved insulation, is also a matter for the private sector, and those companies struggling to survive the downturn. The only difference is that they pay for their heating costs, while it is the taxpayer who foots the bill for the energy inefficiencies at public buildings.

However, it is important that this issue is considered from a police perspective. Many stations, particularly in rural North Yorkshire, were built before energy conservation and climate change had become such contentious political issues. Even some of the more modern premises in the country, including those built a decade ago, no longer conform to environmental standards.

The obvious solution would be to build a new generation of eco-friendly buildings. Yet the reality is that the police, like the rest of the public sector, have no money – they, too, are having to make significant savings. And, where new premises have materialised, they have invariably been funded by the flawed PFI programme that leaves the public purse footing the bill for decades to come.

This should not preclude all organisations, irrespective of whether they're state-funded or not, from reappraising their own energy efficiency policies and looking to see how supplies can be conserved.

It is noticable, for example, the number of high-rise office blocks that keep the lights on for 24 hours a day when they're staffed only on a 9am-5pm basis. Equally, the greater use of insulation may save costs in the long-term – if the occupiers can afford the initial outlay.

Either way, the prospect of even higher energy bills – it is curious that gas and energy prices are, again, rising as winter dawns – should offer sufficient motivation to every sector of the economy to look at how efficiences can be made in the weeks and months ahead. The alternative is even more money going to waste unnecessarily.